No, it wasn’t a Nazi salute.
I’ve moved: check out my newest posts in the Times of Israel.
Elon Musk clearly could not restrain his elation and enthusiasm following President Donald Trump’s inauguration; during a festive rally at Capital One Arena in Washington, he presented a jubilant, triumphant fist and cried a loud ‘Yes!’ to the crowd. A gesture he made subsequently, though, has led many a Jew and gentile alike to wonder if he was merely celebrating, though, or if there was a more questionable undertone to his actions.
It was particularly inflammatory, as well, given its proximity to Holocaust Memorial Day — the time of this article’s writing. He declared, ‘I just want to say thank you for making it happen,’ to the audience of Trump supporters, before beating his chest with his right hand, casting it crossways upwards, his palm looking downwards. ‘My heart goes out to you.’ In Germany, gestures such as Musk’s are illegal.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, went against public anger at Musk and instead reinforced his support for the billionaire, claiming he was “falsely smeared.” Wrongly accused, he claims, of being a Nazi, Nazi sympathiser, or an antisemite. (Let it be known that Netanyahu avoided directly addressing Musk’s alleged salute).
Yet Musk continued to fan the flames shortly after he thanked Netanyahu with a post on X:
‘Don’t say Hess to Nazi accusations! Some people will Goebbels anything down! Stop Gőring your enemies! His pronouns would’ve been He/Himmler! Bet you did nazi that coming.’
In an era where public figures wield tremendous amounts of power to shape discourse, the commitment to employ remarks with care simply must not — cannot, even — be overstated or exaggerated. Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), responded forcefully, as he should. “We’ve said it hundreds of times before and we will say it again: the Holocaust was a singularly evil event, and it is inappropriate and offensive to make light of it,” Greenblatt wrote on X. Directing his comment squarely at Musk, he added, “The Holocaust is not a joke.”
Greenblatt had, somewhat oddly, kept silent earlier in the week in regard to Musk’s, ahem, hand motion. Even during a panel on antisemitism at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he abstained from addressing Musk directly. The ADL has not explained the inconsistency between criticizing Musk’s X post and remaining silent on his hand gesture. A spokesperson did not respond to questions from Jewish News about why his X post was criticized, while the gesture itself, likely seen by a larger audience, went unremarked upon.
This is not the first time the ADL has found itself in the intense debates surrounding specific symbols and their interpretations. Just days before, the organization faced criticism for clarifying that Musk’s contentious hand gesture was not a Nazi symbol, a clarification necessary due to widespread misinterpretation and its potential implications.
Yesterday I attended a talk in a synagogue in South-West London on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, given by Peter Lantos. Anyone remotely familiar with the Jewish community in London is equally aware that there are barely enough of us South London Jews to make a Minyan on any given Shabbat eve or morning — let alone a weekday.
Despite the scarcity of Jews, the building appeared more crowded than on Yom Kippur, (for the Gentiles amongst my readers — not that there are many — this is the holiest day of the Jewish calendar and is the day when most otherwise secular Jews will grace the synagogue with their company) full to the brim with an audience eager to hear from him.
Lantos is the author of The Boy Who Didn’t Want To Die, selected as The Times Children’s Book of the Week, winner of the UKLA Non-Fiction Prize, and shortlisted for Best Children’s Non-Fiction at the 2024 British Book Awards. It is an astonishing account of a childhood moulded by inconceivable difficulty and tribulation. At just five years old, Lantos was deported along with his household from a small Hungarian town to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in the summer of 1944. His father perished of starvation, yet he and his mother endured.
“I never imagined we would see the day when what appears to be a Heil Hitler salute would be made behind the Presidential seal,” — Rep. Jerrold (D-N.Y.) Nadler, X.
His talk served as a wake-up call that the Holocaust is not as historically distant as it might seem: the men and women who survived remain among us; on the streets, in the synagogues, in the cafes. What struck me most about his speech was not the lowest, most tragic aspects of his lifetime, but rather the occasional jokes he shared with the audience — a contrast I found almost inconceivable. As a Jew who has never endured such atrocities, I can scarcely fathom how a man like him, a witness to some of humanity’s darkest moral failings, a man who lost twenty-one beloved family members, could summon the strength to jest. To feel anything aside from anguish to my mind seems beyond extraordinary.
But this was not the focus of today’s article. Musk’s foolishness was out of ignorance; a man with a history of dealings with white supremacists, finally held responsible for his actions. In Germany, protesters projected an image of Musk’s extended arm alongside the word “Heil” onto the side of a Tesla plant. In Italy, a leftist student body suspended a statue of sorts of Musk at the Milan site where the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was executed in 1945.
Rather than taking the decision to address and control the growing uproar with modesty or contemplation, Musk doubled down, lashing out at his critics. “The radical leftists are really upset that they had to take time out of their busy day praising Hamas to call me a Nazi,” he posted on X. This was also thereafter shared by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Musk’s retort, laced with provocation, echoes a burgeoning pro-Israel narrative: that his detractors, particularly on the left, are hypocrites: too willing to overlook and ignore antisemitism within the pro-Palestinian movements of the Left while condemning it just about anywhere else. But such rhetoric only serves to polarise the discourse further. At a time when the global rise of extremism demands serious engagement, Musk’s approach feels almost too reckless to be true. But this is a 53-year-old billionaire we’re talking about.
It is my personal opinion that Musk’s gesture was not out of any amount of malice or conscious antisemitism, but rather because he is a man with few feelings of commitment to social boundaries. Some labelled it a ‘Roman salute’; others a “heartfelt” manifestation of delight; and others dismissed it altogether as simply a clumsy, graceless and uncoordinated expression of a man who knows little about the dividing line, the border, of what is socially okay and not okay. Note: perhaps the ‘Roman salute’ argument is weaker than others; if it wasn’t before this ordeal, the “Roman salute” is certainly now trending on social media, with side-by-side images of toga-clad performers from grainy films set in ancient Rome, extending their right arms alongside a video of Musk doing the same.
But did there ever exist a Roman salute in antiquity? There is no historical evidence to suggest the gesture was used in ancient Rome. Its roots are far more recent and surprisingly evasive. It first emerged in late 19th-century theatre productions and early 20th-century films, later inspiring its adoption by the fascists in Italy and Germany we are all too familiar with. Before that, however, it had an entirely different use altogether: for decades, it was performed by American schoolchildren as part of patriotic ceremonies and traditions. How times change.
Thanks for reading today’s article, everyone — maybe even give another one a read while you’re at it. I’d like to expand on the talk from Peter Lantos, so if that’s something you’d like to read about, do let me know.
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Good day! — Simon
